So the discussion last night on racism and SJWs got me thinking about how much we should tolerate racism as a society. Now, I'm going to warn you, before I actually get into my theory on this, i'm going to ask that you do not eat anything while reading this. Because I got a good analogy I wanna go with here, but it's kind of gross. Just trust me.
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...okay, done with your food? Put it away? Good. Okay, so my theory for how much racism we should tolerate in society is based on my idea of the "FDA test". As we know, the Food Drug Administration puts legal limits of what...impurities can be put in our food. Now, you might ask, what kind of impurities are we talking about? Oh, you know, piece of bugs like cockroaches, rat poop, rat hair. Yeah. All of that stuff is in our food. But why is it in our food? Well, because, quite frankly, due to the nature of manufacturing food and putting out enough stuff, it's impossible to achieve a standard of having ZERO in it. It would be completely impractical for a company or other entity to produce things at a profit with a standard of ZERO defects. So what the FDA does is establish legal limits of what can be allowed. Ideally the amounts are small enough that they are not harmful to human health, and but large enough that companies can practically and profitably produce product.
Leftists like SJWs, approach racism from a zero tolerance perspective. They have this idea that it's #1 that MUST be expunged from society at all costs, and they are willing to put all other practical considerations aside to do this. This leads to a form of radicalism on the subject I find distateful and stifling. I think we can all agree racism is bad. Just like rat feces, cockroaches, and other disgusting things that are found in our food are bad. It's disgusting, and if we have too much in our society, it can lead to bad consequences like systemic discrimination.
But...at the same time, much like with reality with our food production, we kind of have to tolerate some level of that stuff, in order to achieve other goals. For example, and this is one thing I really rub against social justice activists the wrong way on, I support a free society with freedom of speech and thought. And that includes the right to be racist or sexist. I support a right to association, at least in the private sphere (I would argue in the public sphere, including commerce, that discrimination should be outlawed though). That might lead to people being discriminatory toward having associates of a different race or something. I think that we should hire people who are the best people for the job, or accept the smartest students into college. I think a lot of discrimination quite frankly happens on levels so informal that regulating such behavior may be more harmful than it's worth. Heck, that actually sums up my distaste with SJWs, they often push their way into private spheres of society with their social policing that they have no business pushing into and trying to regulate how people can act amongst themselves or others, and in doing so, violate their liberty in the process.
We can, and absolutely should regulate racism when it can lead to negative consquences including lost rights or overt discrimination. All races deserve equal rights under the law. They deserve to not reasonably be discriminated against in business, both as customers, and as employees. I guess I would go so far to say they're entitled to not having an overtly hostile work environment as well, and that it is okay to fire racist employees for making others feel uncomfortable or unsafe on the job. There is a fine line between speech and harassment here, and I guess that the saying that the right that one can swing their fist ends at the beginning of another person's nose. So don't get me wrong. Systemic discrimination on a legal perspective is wrong. Discrimination in the workplace or in places of business is wrong. Everyone deserves equal rights and equal access to resources. Now, how far can we take that? Well, as far as is reasonable. Should we have mandated quotas, or affirmative action, or stuff like that? I'd say no. Should we have reparations or something like that? Also no. I think that if something becomes too burdensome on liberty or another higher, conflicting priority, that yeah, maybe sometimes a little racism has to be tolerated for the greater good. Again, it's like rat poop. No one WANTS it in their food but if a little ends up there and it's within FDA standards, eh....
I know, it's a disgusting analogy, but I think it's apt, because much like rat poop, we can likely agree that racism is disgusting and highly undesirable. But like everything else in life, there's nuance on everything. And there are conflicting priorities that we need to look out for, and if the costs of trying to eradicate racism come at the cost of another higher priority or run into some other practical roadblock, well, that's what we gotta tolerate.
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